Bella Knitting

Go Ahead, Make My Day...

Sarah

Obligatory reminder: enter the Bella Blogiversary contest! We only have a couple of entries so far, so your chances of winning a prize are excellent!

  Meanwhile, we've got a little award ourselves -- Suzanne of Yarnhog dubbed us "You Make My Day Award"-worthy. Thanks, Suzanne! According to the rules, it is now our duty to do the following: "Give the award to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blogland. Let them know by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times."

Narrowing it down to just 10 is the hard part! I've got more than ten times that in my bloglines, making my day on a routine basis. But rules are rules, so here you go, in no particular order:

Lola and Ava of Two Black Sheep -- go congratulate Lola on her new arrival! He's a cutie.
Karen of Yarn is My Metier -- always a great read and a source of project inspiration!
Felicia of Fluffy Flowers -- you can't see her creatures and not smile.
Dave of Criminy Jickets -- among other excellent bloggerly qualities, dude cranks out socks like...well, like something you crank out pretty fast.
Maryese of Monster Yarn -- oy, the gorgeousness of the photos...
Teyani, the Intrepid Fiber Wizard -- a most talented fiberista and knitter!
Cindy of SnidKnits -- Cindy recently moved to Bangalore. Reading about her experiences there is a great vicarious travel experience!
Splatgirl at Splatgirl Creates -- Like food, interior design, craftiness in general, or an adorable gigantic greyhound? Splatgirl has it all.
Kim of Yarn Abuse -- aside from being an all-around pleasure to read, Kim has made me fall in love with Elizabeth Zimmerman's patterns all over again, many times.
Oiyi of Oiyi's Crafts -- Hmm, I guess I'm bookending my list with bloggers who just had babies. Go congratulate Oiyi, too! I hope that even though she's had her baby, she'll still continue to use her cute little pooches as occasional knitwear models.

 

Are You Superstitious?

Laura

I ‘m not superstition and it is a good thing too! The NY Giants were playing the Green Bay Packers today. I am originally from NY and was raised by a father who is a fanatical NY Giant fan. My friends still have season tickets and only forgive me for also routing for the Chicago Bears because there was no NFL game day ticket when I lived there.  When faced with Bears football or nothing what is a girl to do?

Bella knitting has a line of projects for sports fans.  I have been working on a hat in NY Giants colors but since I finished it I started on a sweater for babies and kids.  It seems that sports fans are as fanatic about their teams as we are about our knitting (and for some of us it’s both) so what a great combination.

I needed good colors and a recognizable logo for the project I had in mind and so with  complete lack for foresight I started my Green Bay Packer's sweater earlier this week.  I laughed at stories of how the Green Bay fans were covering up street signs with New York links. Rolled my eyes when I heard they had stopped playing Seinfeld since it was based in NYC. Oh, pleeeease, I am so not superstitious. 

And so we proved today that knitting can not jinx a football game 2,000 miles away in sub-zero temperatures! But I will still make sure I am not knitting any new England Patriots stuff on February 3rd!!

I'm getting this ready for Stitches. I'll let you know more about it as soon as I read though all my chicken scratch design notes. If you have eagle eyes you might notice that 3-needle i-cord join I was playing with along the raglan sleeve!

p.s. New web site up in T minus 48 hours! :)

Twins

Sarah

First, a quick reminder: enter the Bella Blogiversary Contest! Details are here, and you can check out the cute entry from Carol of Knitting Knot here. (That cat looks so stoked, it cracks me up.)

So, last time I posted, I had just finished knitting one of my Death by Socks socks. It was hard on my fingers (and hands, and shoulders) but I completed the pair and got them sent off to my victim on Thursday, so I'm quite happy about that. For all I know, I'll receive the socks of my doom on Tuesday (in case you forgot, Monday is M.L.K. Day, a postal holiday) but I'm just happy I managed to complete a pair before being knocked out of the game. Any accomplishments beyond that will be icing on the cake, really.

After finishing those socks, my knitting suddenly felt so...free. All of my other needles seemed ridiculously large after handling size 1's exclusively for so many hours over the course of two-and-a-half days. I even finished my Minimalist Cardigan, and am working on the seaming! Bet you thought I'd forgotten that one, huh? I've been pretty good with my yarn diet (buying a new skein for the Death by Socks competition doesn't count, right?) of only buying one new skein after knitting three from my stash. In anticipation of a visit to one of my favorite LYS next Friday (yeah, avoiding the LYSes definitely has helped the diet), I've been happily knitting away at hats for Jason and Measure. I love how hats provide such near-instant knitterly gratification.

Since the Death by Socks socks were my first "real" (fine-gauge) socks in a while, I've been feeling the urge to cast on for another pair. Maybe do a little sock designing. Who knows? So of course I was excited to see my Seasons Yarn Club shipment from Sundara on my porch this afternoon. I opened it up, wondering what fabulous color the little box contained. Funnily enough, "Burnt Cranberry" was almost an exact match for another Sundara sock yarn in my stash, "Heirloom Tomato." The former is in the foreground of the photo, the latter is the one wound into a cake. In person, there's slightly more difference; the "Burnt Cranberry" has an ever-so-slightly orange-ish cast to it, but still, really close. They're definitely fraternal twins.

Speaking of which, I found out recently that a friend of mine is pregnant with fraternal twins. Any suggestions on what I should knit for them? She doesn't know the gender(s?) yet, but I can at least have some pattern ideas queued up and ready for when she finds out.

One Down...

Sarah

I knitted like a demon yesterday, and this morning I finished up the first of my Death by Socks socks! Well, the ends aren't woven in, but I'll do that on both socks at once if/when I finish the second. (See, if I get sent a pair of socks, I'll be dead, and I'll have to send these to my assassin, who will have to finish them and send them to my victim...) I've made a little progress on the second sock, so I'm hoping to have them finished and in the mail tomorrow. If I'm lucky.

Also, Measure got another new tooth yesterday -- little dude has four front teeth now, in addition to the two bottom ones! Teething days are not the happiest of days, but it's so neat watching him develop. A little scary sometimes (in an "oh my gosh, someday he's going to be DRIVING" kind of way), but neat.

We're One!

Sarah & Laura

Wow, can you believe it? (You probably can.) The Bella Knitting blog is a year old today! During the past year, we've written something like 285 posts, and met all kinds of new blog-friends. It's been fun, and we're looking forward to next year!

We'll be celebrating our blogiversary for the next week or so with a little contest, a look back at the past year, and by introducing our new web site! Laura is working around the clock to finish it up, and it's quite close. But first things first: today we'd like to invite you to enter our Bella Blogiversary Contest!

Inspired by Bittersweet's recent contest, we're asking you to tell a story with your knitting (or crochet, or fiber, needles, hooks, etc -- you get the idea) in just three or four photos. Be creative! To enter, post your photo-story on your blog and email us a link to the post, or, if you don't have us a blog, send it to us in an email. Try to get your entries to us within 10 days -- that's January 20th -- and we'll announce the winners shortly after.

Oh, yeah, there will be prizes! The first-place winner will receive a $50 Bella Knitting gift certificate, the second-place winner will receive a purse hook, and the third-place winner will receive a knitting care kit. We're looking forward to your entries!

Design Elements

Laura

My Favorite Weekend

I’m not sure how many of you are hunkered down in front of your TV’s with two day’s worth of knitting prepared like I am all because it’s one of the best weekends of the year . . .  Yes, it is finally NFL Wild Card weekend!

It’s the best football ever; two days, four games, eight playoff quality teams and always the unexpected. TiVo has only improved the experience – allowing me to pause the game (briefly) when family reality intrudes. “Mom, do you think we can have breakfast today?” was the pre-game question since the shows here on the west coast start at a somewhat unreasonable time of 9 am. I called back “There are waffles in the freezer” without breaking the rhythm in my row and mentally patt edmyself on the back for being a good mother and teaching the kids to be independent.

Don’t worry, the beer and chips didn’t come out until the second game in the evening. That’s why I can’t blame my truly obvious color change error on the drink. When I watch football I like to pull out my sports fan scarf. Usually knit with Karabella Aurora 8, but since I am a self-indulgent knitter (it's the best way to be) and my team’s (Stanford) colors happen to be available I am knitting with Karabella Margrite. The 20% cashmere blend makes my fingers smile.

It’s the perfect project to work on while watching TV; simple but not boring, with consistent color changes that don’t require much attention –> 4 rows of red then 2 rows of white. The operative word being “much”. Not only did I knit 4 rows of white early on in the first quarter, I didn’t even notice until much later.

So what to do? Ripping out a stitch with so many yarn overs is a tedious affair with questionable success (see our Life Line post for a bit of “do as I say not as I do”). This is why some so-called errors are really just opportunities. I like to call these little mental bloopers “design elements”. All I need to do is add the same wide white stripe at the other end and it will look like it was done on purpose.

You guys will be the only ones to know and I know you won’t tell!

The Theory of Time

Laura

par.ent.hood n.   a period of renewed learning

You’ll often hear parents talk about how much they learn from their little ones. As the kids get older the opportunities to learn only increase. Their school work pulls long dormant memories from the back of our brains (a squared + b squared = c squared) or helps us remember we were dozing off during particular sections of the classroom curriculum (similes, metaphors and hyperboles).  As parents we can either avoid homework like the plague (tempting) or embrace this opportunity to learn with enthusiasm (education is wasted on youth and all that).

Thanks to my daughter’s 8th grade science project (due Monday), I can now state with confidence that Einstein did not know it all!  The Theory of Relativity (which I am thrilled I can now explain) simply states that ‘speed’ is not absolute, it can only be relative to something else. For example, when Zorro rides his horse down a moving train to save the day how fast is he going? He is riding at 5 mph (relative to the train), however, since the train in also moving he is going 30 mph (relative to the Earth), but (here we go) since the Earth is orbiting around the sun he is going 65,030 mph (relative to the sun). Ta da, you are now armed to impress your friends and family.

Einstein then jumped into several theories regarding time and the speed of light which are much easier to understand if you've spent hours watching Star Trek. The whole “nothing can go faster than the speed of light (except Captain Kirk) and time slows down as you approach the speed of light” thing is all fine as far as it goes but Einstein missed some practical applications so I’ll just add them for him:

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•    The faster one knits the slower time goes.

•    As one approaches the end of the project, time can reverse altogether.

•    Time slows to an even greater extent when knitting long i-cords and finishing.

The proof is in the pictures of this baby boy sweater I am designing (it is just so hard to get boy stuff that's not too fussy). One side is done!  The other, in spite of my intense focus, has been almost done for much too long. I guess I must be approaching the speed of light.